Should I pimp my old posts?

I suck at pimping my own crap. Not sure what that is all about really, just have it ingrained in me not to brag, self-promote, toot my own horn too much. Which is good as I have no musical talent. Or vuvuzela.

Wave of the Now?
someecards.com - please continue to value my outdated contributions.
That’s my name for my social media category and why I am unsure about recycling older posts, as well as rethinking the ‘now’ part of it. (Future post pending.)

Fighting spam aside, I never understood turning off comments on older posts but then I’ll get tweaked when lured to a 2-year old post that is now out of date or irrelevant. Or if the post is still current, be frustrated by a blog owner still hyping it but not replying to open comments.

I do read and comment on ‘older’ stuff – did so the other day as I get to know more of Margie’s thoughts on social media. But I find that the exception – not many seem to do so.

FWIW I’m already sharing older posts.

  • I use the LinkedWithin plugin for this, probably should dig into some analytics to see if it’s working.
  • I created a new category – which I may need to use more often – to revisit an older post with a newer one, to update it and see if it’s changed. Jack B does this, with an aggregate post of posts we hadn’t but should read posts. Clever.

I am curious about the value of promoting older stuff.

How far back is too far back, and are we better off bringing the ideas forward with a newer post? Do you get new comments, readers? If readers are lurkers, how is it helping you to see bumps in old posts are you getting new readers that way, more subscriptions or just current readers seeing the older stuff? Is there any downside?

I’m thinking of auto tweeting. Somebody stop me.

I’ve seen this ‘Tweet Old Post’ plugin. A lot.

From what I’ve seen I know I can customize it with a big fat warning. Wondering about the other settings, how low or infrequent can I go? Like once or twice a week? Which may seem silly but as I can never guarantee how much I’d be on Twitter, I don’t want to auto-hype my own posts 23 out of 34 tweets a day, especially since I don’t tweet that much. Just don’t want to put Tweet Old Post on overdrive, you know.

Think almost everyone’s using this plugin. Tips, tricks, advice? Please share.

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19 thoughts on “Should I pimp my old posts?”

  1. Older post can never be too old if it’s content is timeless, such is where Tweet Old Post plugin may be useful. If not, one must be sure about its relevance in the present. Just a thought. 🙂

    1. Good that you mentioned that Walter. I did exclude some posts that seemed ‘timed’ including Follow Fridays and a few others that wouldn’t read as well today. I’ve already seen the ‘success’ as one of the older posts that has more of that ‘timeless’ vibe got a couple of RTs. Thanks for your thoughts.

  2. Davina, I think you should most definitely use Tweet Old Post. Although some people keep whining how they are exposed to same old content, there are more and more NEW people who will never see your old posts otherwise. I have received some great results after people coming to see some of my old posts. You can’t make everyone happy all the time, but I think it is good to tweet old posts because of the new audience you can get.

    You can always set it to tweet once a day if you think it is too much. You can also add something like “from the archives” or something along those lines.

    I always use one of the related posts plugins (at the moment one with thumbnails) and interlink old and new posts. That is the only way to get people to see all of your good stuff 🙂

    I have a category on my blog where I put time sensitive posts and that is the only category on my blog that never gets into Tweet old posts. That way, even if someone lands on the old post, they will find something good to read.

    One more thing, you should re-publish some of your good posts from time to time. I had a good post that was buried under months of other posts and I edited it a bit and republished it. It had really good results and was shared a lot.
    Brankica recently posted..If There Was Only One Book in The World, I Wish it Was This One

    1. The consensus is yes, give it a whirl so I think I’ll install it and see if I can live with the settings. I also need to think more about revisiting older posts, as I do try to bring them forward when there’s something current I can tie them to and make them fresh again. Thanks for your good suggestions, much appreciated Brankica. 🙂

  3. Davina,
    Please consider someone like me who has an insatiable appetite to read good stuff and very little patience to search your blog. I know I’m not typical and I hate the twinge I get as well when I repost an old post to Twitter, etc. I feel the collective sigh from subscribers who feel the disappointment and maybe even frustration rereading something they enjoyed the first time, but really want new stuff. But I’m relatively new to Twitter and it’s the ONLY place I can go to find new blogs. I say we all have to get over the internal and external criticism and hesitation and POST IT ANYWAYS! If it was good once, I want to read it. Just found Twitter Buffer. Maybe that’ll help me a bit?
    That’s my two cents!
    Betsy

    1. What a good perspective Betsy, not everyone has the time to crawl through a blog for old posts. So maybe tweeting them once in a while is doing others a favor. Thank you!

  4. Hi Davina, thanks for the shout!

    I struggle with this a lot as well. In fact, I struggle with pimping my new posts. I use 2 things that seem to help. One is “popular posts” and one is “similar posts.” The similar post thing is kind of nice not just because your readers can see, well, similar posts, but it can also show you that you’ve written about the same topic 27 times in the last month, which would not be good.

    Let me know what you figure out 🙂

    1. One reason I want to try this Margie, I’m not so good at pimping my current posts either. Plus, I am open to streamlining some work, trying to make my efforts easier; I figure I could handle a little automation, if I could control it. Oh, and I watch myself on topics and if I catch my 5th ‘Twitter’ post in a row, I’ll put it on hold for a week. Let you know what happens.

  5. Davina

    I got one thing to say: pimp those suckers!

    There are three ways I do this:

    1) TweetOld Post – it’s not too bad for me as I don;t go on Twitter more than 10 minutes a day. Occasionally I’ll leave Twitter on for an hour – but it’s set to only send out one post every 4 to 6 hours or something.
    2) YARP – Yet Anotehr Related Post plug in. This lists 4 or 5 similar posts at the end of a post based on keywords and stuff. Though it’s just text links. I’ve seen a version of this which displays the ‘featured image’ for a post with the blog title. Be interested to find out what plug in that is….
    3) I often link to older posts within the body of a newer post.

    Another way you can do it is to have a ‘sneeze’ page – a list post or link post, where you list 5 or 10 or however many older posts directly from a new post.

    I think if you write content that’s not time sensitive that you should pimp it. It doesn’t have to take time – and it might be the difference between someone who comes and becomes a fan and someone who reads and leaves. Don’t know about you – but I want ‘fans.’ I spend a lot of creative effort on my posts and don’t want them gathering virtual dust!

    HTH

    Paul
    Paul Wolfe recently posted..Blog Post Critique 1 – Adarsh Thrampy/Sales Maximus

    1. I think I have enough of an archive now to do it and a little self-promotion can’t hurt. I like the gathering ‘virtual dust’ thing Paul, good point. I think I’m fine with the LinkedWithin vs. the YARP but may have to experiment with the Tweet Old Post, just to see. Thanks.

  6. I definitely see value in promoting older posts. When I start reading a new blog, I definitely go back and read past posts. As a current reader, I may have missed a post somewhere, so it’s nice to be reminded of it.

    I tested out Tweet Old Post for a few weeks, but it sent one post out more times than I would have liked. And, I found it too much work to set up the rules to gain control. Now, I do a manual version: I send out 3 posts per day, only on weekdays, through Buffer. I select the posts myself, then use my handy bit.ly Chrome plugin to get the text of the tweet to put in Buffer. I preface the tweet with “From the archives.”

    Results: I get new comments here and there and definitely some RTs. You just never know if a post from 6 months ago will be the one to attract your next new reader, which could lead you to a new customer. I’ve definitely connected with new friends on Twitter from tweeting old posts.

    But alas, the plugin doesn’t work for me, but my manual hybrid version takes me less than 5 minutes each evening to set up. Not a bad investment I think.
    Marianne Worley recently posted..Writing for Readability: A Few Simple Tricks

    1. This is just one of those few things I was considering automating, that if I could get it just so.. I’d try to ‘set and forget’ it. Now that’s an idea Marianne.. good one. If I can’t figure out the TOP settings to do what I want them to, schedule them via Buffer. Like you said, just a few minutes a day. Hmm.. now to come up w/ my own silly ‘archive’ warning. 🙂

  7. I tooted once……..in front of my wife………..she didn’t appreciate the humor.

    I dunno; up to this point I haven’t tried to specifically drive traffic to my site per se. However, for the first time ever I had a GP on my site from Kaarina. I’ve noticed the traffic is similar to when I normally post on Monday.

    So what does that mean? If I now post on Monday and Thursday will my weekly traffic double? Now that I have more activity do I pimp old stuff just in case somebody didn’t get to see it?

    Just my uneducated guess is, you might get a very few ‘new’ looks but I can’t imagine it would be anything of significance. Since yours is more business related however, it wouldn’t hurt to get as many eyes as you can.

    My vote is still A; if you don’t overdo it I think it will be a plus instead of a negative. FWIW
    Bill Dorman recently posted..Life as a splendid torch

    1. It can’t hurt Bill and not really sure who’d notice. Which brings up my original question of the value beyond clicks and views. Like you said, if not overdone then it should be more of a positive. At this point, I can only try and see what happens; if I don’t like it, always turn it off.

  8. Hi – thanks for the link. 🙂 I think it’s good to highlight older posts – as Jack says, not everyone will see them the first time around.

    My main gripe with Tweet Old Post is when that’s pretty much the only thing the person is posting. Also, when there are no new posts on a blog but the old posts are still being promoted on a daily basis, it feels like I’m being hassled to read the old posts. I think that sharing old posts fairly infrequently can work quite well, but only if the author is also having conversations on Twitter, and they’re still posting new content on their blog.

    I quite like sharing the links manually, as I can go looking for posts that I thought were particularly good, but have zero comments. I also like to choose which posts to share- sometimes I see automatic tweets that mention old versions of WordPress, to give one example.
    Ben @ Quick Blog Tips recently posted..Five Things to Include on your About Page

    1. Sorry for the late reply.. got caught in the spam blocker. I share your gripes Ben, wasn’t kidding when I said I’ve seen this plugin used A LOT. I don’t want to over use it, don’t want to have it be all that’s in my stream. Now that I am testing it, I have it on a low setting and have excluded some outdated posts, or anything that’d be off.. like I wouldn’t want a Follow Friday post tweeted on a Tuesday morning, right? Thanks.

  9. I make a point to let people know about old posts for a variety of reasons:

    1) I update more frequently than most so I know that regular readers will probably miss a few.
    2) New readers come along all the time and I want them to gain a sense of who/what I am about.

    For example, I got linked to and stumbled upon by several people and for the past 5 days my traffic has quadrupled over its normal rate. I know that I am not going to be able to keep everyone, but I hope that by pumping out a few links I’ll retain a portion.

    We never know who is reading so I try to be prepared for the moment when Bill Gates, Mark Cuban or Stephen King find my blog and fall in love with it.
    Jack @ TheJackB recently posted..The Best Bloggers Are Storytellers

    1. True, I must be ready for my “Steve Jobs close-up.” Excellent point. 🙂 I get the new readers thing Jack, just wondering if the new readers are just jumping in now and carrying forward, if anyone really spends that much time looking back? People don’t that now, debating current stuff much less something a year old. IDK. I also don’t publish as often as others, so there’s that. I am just thinking about it .. but a) don’t want to be spammy and overdo it and b) don’t want to bother if there’s not much return. Thanks.

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